I've always referred to Charlie as "The Gateway Drug to Jazz," because that's exactly what he was for me. The dude grooves HARD and has chops a teenage power-chord strummer like me could appreciate in the 90s. Plus, he looked like a guy that should have been pounding nails at a construction site, not melting minds with chord substitutions (he's a die hard Ted Greene and George Van Eps guy, by the way).

Flash forward almost two decades and I've been fortunate enough to see him play live at least a dozen times, and take a Skype lesson a few years back. Throughout the Skype lesson, my new dog kept coming up and nudging my leg, wanting to be petted. Several months later, Charlie was in town with Scott Amedola playing a duo gig at McCabe's in Los Angeles, and when I reintroduced myself after the show, his response was "oh yeah, THE DOG GUY!"